Monday, 16 November 2015

Strange Weather in Tokyo

Look, I’m as hacked off as the next man by the
tendency for every Japanese author translated into English to get compared to
Haruki Murakami, as if he’s the only author from the 10th most
populous country in the world. Here, however, I think it might actually be
justified.

A short, odd little book, this. I don’t
want to use the word ‘quirky’ any more than I want to make the Murakami
comparison, but then it looks like I’ve just done both. There’s a curious
flatness to it. Not in the boring or unengaging sense, but more the feeling that
the characters are floating along on the surface of the world without every actually
engaging with, well, anything. In the world but not of it, if you like. The
characters also have prodigious appetites, and food and eating feature a huge
amount, which is very reminiscent of Haruki M.

It’s a May to December love story,
basically, in which a detached thirty-something reconnects and falls in love
with her old high school Japanese teacher. Quite a lot of “Why won’t senpai
sensei notice me?” type angst, but all in all quite touching. Can’t say I loved
it, but there’s definitely something going on here which makes it worth
reading. The heroine hates the Tokyo Giants, which is always a good start, and
manages to stubborn and slightly irrational without being annoying about it,
which is also a difficult trick to pull off.

Basically this book manages to fall just
the right side of a lot of lines it might otherwise have crossed. The title
could have come across as an annoying promotional tactic, desperately trying to
make the Japan connection without really being justified, but even that works,
especially when you realise that the original American edition was titled The Briefcase, which is awful, and the
original Japanese title was sensei no
kaban—Sensei’s Bag—which is even worse. There are definitely worse ways to
spend a two or three hours.